Dots
What the cupcake stands taught me.
For a long time my dots arrived on their own. They came in the glaze: confetti, speckle, flecks of color that fell where they liked. I did not place them, and I liked that I could not. They were the dot in its wild state, landing by chance.
Then I made the cupcake stands, and I started placing dots on purpose. A placed dot behaves differently from a scattered one. It is a decision. Once I was deciding, the dot would not stay still.
What I made first was a seal. Ceralacca, a drop of soft wax pressed shut with a signet, the mark
that closes a letter and says whose hand sent it. I pressed a pool of colored slip onto the clay
and set a dot into it. What I had made was a seal, but the seal opened into a flower: the slip
became petals, the dot became the center. I had not drawn a flower. I had pressed a seal, and it
bloomed.
After the flower came planets down a cone, the buttons of a snowman, the lights strung around a carousel. Each stand was a small occasion, and the dots dressed for it.
The plainest ones came last. In the Rainbow stands there is a single dot and a few carved lines. I paint the surface with colored slip, then carve: the carving cuts through to white clay, the color stays on what the tool did not touch. The dot is the same colored clay, raised. No planet, no flower, no occasion. Just the color, the white lines, and a surface you want to touch.
Companion piece: “Why Cupcake Stands?”